In August 2026, Fortune India featured Nara Lokesh on its cover as a ‘Rising Star’ as part of the “40 Under 40: The Young Visionaries of India Inc.” The magazine, published by the RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group under a licensing arrangement with the global Fortune brand, ordinarily celebrates entrepreneurs, startup founders, and next-generation business leaders. Lokesh is a serving minister in the Andhra Pradesh government, National Working President of the Telugu Desam Party, and the son of Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu. He is the rare politician to receive this particular treatment.
Below is the list of personalities covered in previous editions of the magazine, with Lokesh being the only politician.
Photo Credit: Fortune India
Previous list of Personalities featured in 40 under 40
Photo Credit: Fortune India
The cover story credits Nara Lokesh with a robust investment pipeline. Ironically, several of the largest projects now cited as evidence of Andhra’s industrial momentum—including the Google data center developed with Adani and the ArcelorMittal/Nippon Steel plant—were initiated and formalized through MoUs during the previous Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy administration. The same YS Jagan government also moved early to unlock the state’s marine potential, pioneering four new ports at Ramayapatnam, Machilipatnam, Mulapeta, and Kakinada along with ten fishing harbors.
Photo Credit: Fortune India
The feature arrives at a moment when a concerted effort is underway to project Lokesh as the future face of the TDP, moving him out of his father’s long shadow. National media coverage has been energetic.
Around the same period, the Republic Summit 2026 presented by the RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group featured Lokesh as the only state minister among a roster of chief ministers and Union ministers.
These editorial and platform choices sit alongside a clear commercial relationship. The RPSG Group has secured significant investment clearances in Andhra Pradesh.
Purvah Green, the group’s renewable-energy platform, received a Government Order for a 349.8 MW wind project in Ananthapuram district involving an investment of roughly ₹3,286 crore.
A related entity, Brightfuture Power, was incorporated, and the project allocated under the state’s Integrated Clean Energy Policy.
Separately, PCBL Chemical, another RPSG company, has been allotted land at the Naidupeta multi-product SEZ for a rubber black and value-added chemicals plant, with a revised investment commitment in the range of ₹2,700 crore and higher in earlier statements.
Governments court large industrial investments; business houses seek policy clarity and land; magazines exercise editorial judgment. Yet the optics invite legitimate questions. A business magazine whose parent group is simultaneously securing multi-thousand-crore clearances in a state chooses to elevate a powerful political figure from that same state as a “rising star” of India Inc.? The same group sponsors a high-profile national summit that gives the same figure unusual prominence. Meanwhile, the state’s political machinery is engaged in an open campaign to brand that figure as the next generation of leadership.
The proximity in timing and the overlap of these relationships may reasonably attract public scrutiny. It is, however, the kind of alignment that erodes the appearance of independent coverage and arms-length investment facilitation. When a corporate group provides a national business platform and magazine cover to a key minister from the ruling family, citizens are entitled to ask whether the relationship is purely commercial or editorial?
Fortune India is free to feature whom it chooses. The RPSG Group is free to invest where the policy climate is attractive. The Andhra Pradesh government is free to welcome capital. What is harder to dismiss is the timing, the uniqueness of the political cover in a business list, the summit sponsorship, and the scale of the clearances.
